Donna Summer’s daughter is opening up concerning the cancer battle that took her mom’s life.
On a recent episode of the “Allison Interviews” podcast, Brooklyn Sudano recalled details of her mother’s battle with lung cancer, which took the singer’s life in 2012.
“My mother was extremely strong as an individual. I feel her decision to not share [her diagnosis] with the world was that she was a lady of religion, and he or she really believed that God was going to heal her,” the “My Wife and Kids” star, 42, told host Allison Kugel.
Summer, who Sudano described as “one in all the strongest people” she knew, maintained positivity and surrounded herself with individuals who shared the identical energy.
“Whenever you’re in the general public eye, you find yourself carrying numerous people’s emotions for them,” Sudano continued of her “trooper” mom. “She didn’t think she could carry other people’s fear about her illness, or their expectations of what it could appear to be.”
The “Like to Love You Baby” hitmaker never went to the hospital, much to her doctor’s surprise, and Sudano said the late star was “working on” receiving love “without having to present” throughout the last 12 months of her life.
“She just had a strength and a will that was beyond anybody I’ve ever experienced before, and he or she passed at home in Naples, Florida.”
The Grammy-winning Queen of Disco, who died at 63, is the topic of an HBO documentary that premiered this week.
“Like to Love You, Donna Summer,” which debuted on May 20, opens the lid on the struggles the songstress faced during her successful profession.
She experienced sexual abuse by the hands of her pastor as a toddler and later was physically abused by her partner Peter Mühldorfer, who said he “never could forgive” himself after hitting her.
Her mental health deteriorated, and he or she sincerely contemplated suicide — but her foot got caught on the hotel curtain the moment a housekeeper entered the room. She later admitted that if one other “10 seconds” had passed, she would have been a goner.
“Like to Love You Baby” — some of the scandalous songs of its era — clinched Summer’s legendary status, but despite her public identity as a sex symbol, the disco legend was a born-again Christian.
“After I first discovered that song, there was that moment of me going to my younger sister Amanda and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, do I actually have a crazy song for you!’” Sudano told Kugel.
But a few of Summer’s remarks got her in hot water through the years — namely, the comment: “God didn’t make Adam and Steve. He made Adam and Eve.”
“Her intent was not meant to be hurtful, but obviously many individuals were hurt by it,” Sudano said. “We desired to acknowledge that, but the best way that it snowballed and all of the things that folks said about her and the way she felt concerning the LGBTQ+ community was the whole antithesis of who she was.”
In truth, the actress said that community was “an enormous a part of her fanbase” and their lives, saying Summers was “caught in a changing time about what you can say and what you couldn’t.”
Still, Summer’s success was “groundbreaking,” Sudano said.
“I feel in so some ways it was very empowering to so many individuals to see and witness a lady, particularly a Black woman, be on stage and just own her own power,” she said. “It was groundbreaking for the time.”
